MQX - Installment #1

I will have several posts about the Adventures of MQX; this is only the first. Many pictures need to be resized for blogger first. I spent 3 full days in RI, taking 5 half-day classes, and walking the floor of the show many a hour. It's a mind boggling and exhausting journey, and I am SO thrilled to have done it. I have many tales and many pictures, but this first post is mostly to show some of the quilts. Now, I went to the awards show on Wednesday night, mostly because it was free and then you could have admission to a sneek peak of the show and vendors. I was 99.9% sure I was not getting a ribbon, and I didn't. The top 3-4 quilts in each division are always really good. Like over-the-top unimaginably good - not even in my wildest dreams good. You get the idea. So, Wednesday night, I perused the show for an hour before taking my exhausted bones back to the hotel. I had all Thursday afternoon to look & shop. When Thursday came, I had my bearings. I knew which quilts I specifically wanted to look more carefully at and photograph. And when I got to this one (yea, it's mine!) imagine the surprise to my tired eyes! It had a teacher ribbon on it. These ribbons were not announced at the show the night before. It was such a fantabulous surprise. I had to find a white-gloved MQX helper to take a picture :-) I named this quilt Cartoline da Venezia (Postcards from Venice). It was a big holdup in my signing up for the show because I couldn't come up with a suitable name. Somehow The Italian Floor Quilt seemed inadequate. I will show you the label eventually, as it ties in with the quilt's name. I know you have seen many other detail shots of this quilt in previous posts, so I won't bore ya'll with too many of those. It escapes me how some quilters can spend 100 hours quilting a quilt and then just sit on it until a show. Seriously - I haven't got that kind of control. Here are links to previous posts...Look here, or here, and here (scroll down for a shot of the back). The progression of this quilt was not always a smooth one (remember the Sharpie pen incident???...BTW, it all came out!), but I'm happy with the end result.

One thing I noticed after spending countless hours staring at quilts is that many quilters used higher contrast or just downright blaring colors. Show quilts seem to break all the rules of color combinations. The brighter the better. Maybe it is to catch people's eyes, or the fear that the judges will not remember their's if it's not bold. Dunno, but it's one of those things I'll tuck in my knowledge hat for next time. As busy and bold as I thought mine was - It is subtle in comparison.

The teacher that gave my quilt the ribbon was Dustin Farrell. Now in all honesty, until this week, I had never heard of him. But he managed to walk away with quite a purse of cash at the awards. Here is one of his quilts from the show. It is only about 24"x36", and has a whopping amount of thread. He said that there is more than 6000yards of white thread on the piece! There's barely a thread of fabric to be seen!

All of the details of the animals and trees are thread-painted. There is amazing detail and accuracy. To have had this person place the ribbon on my quilt is quite an honor.

Now, onward to quilt picture...

This quilt intrigued me because it is largely made from the same fabrics that I used. It's someone else's take on an inlaid floor.

A gorgeous and well-ribboned carpenter's star. I payed particular attention to this type of quilt (and there were a few) since I will have to quilt my own one of these in the coming months.

Purely traditional quilts are in the minority, but this applique is pretty.

I love this one - the way the colors explode. It is all raw edge applique.

Here's a great quilting job for a New York Beauty quilt.

There were many quilts of animals. I love the mix of the traditional quilt background with the dog. The quilt in the dog's mouth must have been fun to work out.

Girraffes anyone? very sweet.

Pretty purple flowers.

This is by Claudia Pfiel - Cordoba is simply amazing. It's one of those over-the-top quilting jobs, and is adorned with an absolute ton of crystals. Her quilt won the Best in Show here last year. I can only wonder why this only received a 3rd. As an aside...I had wanted to attend a lecture by judge Linda McCuean about the Judging Process, but couldn't work it into my schedule. There's much to learn still about why judges score certain quilt higher or lower than others.

Obviously, I have a ton of closeups since they show more to me as a quilter than full quilt shots.

Here's another bright one, and a nice NYB.

This is either a wholecloth or a miniature; I can't remember. It's maybe 14" square, and al of the checkered squares are colored with thread. Mind-boggling.

I love how the ribbons swirl, and the quilting floats in the background.

And this is for all the avid paper-piecers out there - The leaves & roses are paper pieced and looked so realistic.

My final shots are of the quilt by Janet Stone which won Best in Show, called Red Letter Daze. All of her quilts somehow work the alphabet into the quilt or quilting. The workmanship and details are precise and intricate. It is impossible to tell if the letters were quilted or done with an embroidery machine. This is quilted on a domestic machine too! Here is a close up...

The fact that this quilt won the Best in Show is just further testiment that I know so very little about the judging process. It didn't win a ribbon in the category that it was entered. I just don't understand that whatsoever. Someone with more knowledge of this process should enlighten me, please!! I'm not saying that this is not deserving of the title. I'm only trying to understand why it does not also have a ribbon from it's division. Inquiring minds need to know!

Stay tuned this week for more MQX Adventure stories-